Tag Archives: Life

Possible Escape Route Version 2.5

Guy with the RV sent me some more pics.

Econoline front

From the front there doesn’t appear to have ever been a collision on that side.  No pics of the other side.

Econoline odometer

Bummer that it only has 80 MPH on the speedometer.  I’d figured on coasting down mountains at 110 or better.

Econoline fridge

He says the fridge isn’t the original.  Says the closed compartment above is a freezer.

Econoline interior

Says that’s new carpet, which the cats should appreciate.  In fact, all that interior needs a few layers of cat hair before it will be able to call itself home.

Boundary issues

I stepped out of the RV to pee around 4:00 am and since it was too dark to read while I stood there pondering life to pass the time.  Tried to anticipate whether, late as it was, I’d be able to get back to sleep, or should I come indoors and do some work on the computer I’d been putting off doing.

So when I finished I’d decided to go up to the cabin and get some coffee, maybe do the comp thing.  But I noticed the wind had blown over a chair where I’d left a pinch bar and it was on the ground.  Picked it up and headed for the cabin porch.

Suddenly I was proud to have the pinchbar because one of the bigger coons I’ve ever encountered met me at the head of the steps, teeth bared.  I leaned backward to begin a step and the coon leaned forward suggesting he/she’d be following while I reared the pinchbar back to strike if needed.

Coon came down the top step with its front legs looking me straight in the eye when I spang hit it with the pinchbar and knocked it backward onto the porch.  This was beginning to tick me off.

I came up the first step while the coon turned around to face me again baring teeth and sort of whine/growling, not much of a pause before it came fast and I whacked hell out of it again upside the head.

Stunned it enough to give me time to think a moment and decide I wasn’t crazy about how this was all going, so as the coon struggled up and turned to face me I hit it again, this time with all the force I could muster.  Took it down again, but not dead, not unconscious.

So I stepped into the cabin and dragged out a .22 pistol inside the door, turned back around just in time to have the coon turning on me again.

Lousy way to start a day.

Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

Been feeling the urge most of the day to read Cyrano de Bergerac again.  Dug around in piles and boxes of books trying to find it and eventually gave up the ghost.  Searched gutenberg.org and found they have a free download of it.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1254

Heck, everything else being equal I wouldn’t mind seeing the movie again.  Jose Ferrer did a great job of capturing the spirit of the book.  I still recall his ‘nose speech’ from seeing the movie as a kid.  The movie was black and white in those days.  Somewhere color slipped in on some of the YouTube versions.

I might be forced to find me a woman

Don Giovanni

At least for a while.  I’ve been kicking it around in my head a lot lately.  If I’m going to do any serious trekking into the high mountains for more than a few days I’m going to have to have someone looking after the felines.  And if I want to spend a season work camping somewhere they almost always require couples, as opposed to singles.

Fact is, I run across a lot of men who might be a lot easier to get along with than a woman, but most of them have their own ideas about what they’d prefer to do with themselves as opposed to doing what I might wish them to do.  And women tend to be a lot easier to come by in my experience.  The problem is keeping things clean and well lighted, the parties of the first and second parts each knowing where the other’s coming from, and where they’re going.

That can get complicated.  Mainly because one of the two parties is working on more than one agenda without coming out and saying so, figuring the agenda of the other can be modified after the hook is set better.

But a lot of the things I want to do before I die are going to require someone to lift the other end of something.  Finding someone willing to lift the other end and take joy in doing it is no easy matter.  Whatever the object needs lifting, whatever the agenda.

Afterthought:  A woman who owns a couple of mules or a string of pack goats and a few acres of land up near the continental divide might work out well.  Also a stock trailer and something to pull it.  Probably can find something on Craigslist.

Afterthought #2:  I can’t, in good conscience, recommend me to any woman.  In fact, I’d counsel strongly against me as a consideration.  Fact is, I’m a nice guy.  Got an honest streak in me and enough of a century behind to know this whole thing was a lousy idea.  Though fun, in an oblique sort of way.

Escape Route Version 2.5

Ford RV

1970s Ford

If the guy isn’t disinformationing me about the shape it’s in, this might be the next step in the long road home.  He says it’s got all new tires, spent the last 20 years under a carport, says everything works and is willing to provide the means for me to test everything before we finalize a deal.

Says it’s never had any leaks of any kind, roof, plumbing, and the structure, panelling of the coach is solid.  Says it has 60,000 actual miles on the gasoline engine.

If he hasn’t sold it by the time I can get to see it I’ll have a careful look at it first chance I can manage.

Tough year here for cats

invadercat1

Something snagged the Invadercat here a while back, tore him up badly and took out one eye.  He hung around here a week-or-so for food, didn’t appear to be getting worse.  But then he vanished, as he’s always been prone to do.  I know he was getting food at one of the ranches around here, probably several.

But once he left he hasn’t been back.  Might be one of the other folks who’ve been feeding him took him to a vet and had him doctored, or maybe something got him in the woods.  Life’s dangerous enough in the real world for a cat with two good eyes and no serious injuries.

Meanwhile, Ms Tabby’s having worse than her usual battle with spring and summer leg and skin troubles.  Getting welts from either cactus, or fire ants on her legs, belly and tail.  I see her crouched in the meadow stalking things in places where I know there are fire ant beds, so that might be the problem.  But she’s looking worse now than anytime since she’s been with me.

Ms Niaid and Mr Hydrox are doing generally okay, though Niaid’s looking skinnier than I’d like.  She’s bringing in several mice per day to show off before she eats them, but still wants the catfood and is the eagerest eater of them all.  After I used the sheep shears on her she hasn’t picked up burrs and gotten matted hair so badly, seems a lot more pleased with herself.  Gets around well for a senior citizen.

Mr Hydrox only has half of himself sheep sheared, avoided being caught to have it finished after we had a difference of opinion during the operation regarding how much more to take off.  But last night he wanted to sleep with me, so I’m thinking he’s going to have less hair soon.

All in all central Texas probably just ain’t the exact right place for these felines and this 70 year old man and the Coincidence Coordinators are raising the ante for staying any longer than I have to.

Thinking positive about bologna – The new paradigm

If you think you’ve reached the point where you just can’t look a bologna sandwich in the eye one more time, maybe it’s time to begin using your noggin.  Even if all you’ve got is a frying pan and a Coleman camp stove you can make a concoction you’ll savor.

Chop up that bologna into bits the size of dill pickle slices and throw it in the pan with chopped onion, minced garlic, and a teaspoon of grapeseed oil.  Turn it and stir it until the bologna browns and curls up on the sides.

Once it’s done, throw on a teaspoon of chopped dill pickles, and smear it all between those two slices of bread.  Curry, ginger, ancho, jalapeno, green pepper, all of them will add some variety to carry you through until payday.

The old ‘pound of red and a loaf of bread’ method of squeezing through hard times was never good past the second day.  Torturing yourself to death after the third was just a method of robbing life of potential joy.

This ain’t the 20th Century anymore.

Reincarnation – Life after the evidence locker

dodge powerwagonWhen I came across this picture on the web a while back I was fairly certain I recognized it.  I believed and still believe it’s the truck belonging to the man and wife wood cutter couple murdered in Catron County, New Mexico while I was working Fox Mountain.  An incident I described in loving detail in the Adams Diggings book.  They were found several months later, a bear having dug them up where they were folded yinyang style into a 4’x4’x4′ grave in an ancient ruin site.

Damn I love that truck.  Nothing sissie at all there.  A guy could drive that thing around just about anywhere he might wish to go.  It’s been pre-disastered so the odds of anything bad happening in it would be nil.

FFFuture Shock

The Internet came fast, though it’s tempting to take it for granted and just absorb it as it comes along without having to faint and revive yourself.

A person can hop over to Craigslist to see what types of travel trailers and cheap RVs people have they want to sell in lordee-knows-where places he tried to forget exist in Texas.  Pop off an email or two to the people doing the selling.

Exhaust that and pop over, shoot off an email to the USFS district handling the Gila Wilderness to find out the condition of this-or-that trail nobody in his right mind would use. Whether a particular trail has been cleared enough to a particular spot to allow a mountain bike to use it.

Pop over to Google maps for a quickie satellite look at a mountain or three, reboot the machine to clear the memory when things start to die.

Pop to dogpile.com to do a search of bicycle forums and discussion boards to see what mountain bikes are costing and what people are saying about them.  Then another search or two  to find out how much weight a burro could be expected to carry.  Whether anyone’s got a notion about them as riding animals and the maximum weight of the person they could carry under particular conditions.

Spang, another websearch to DIY sites looking for ideas for load carrier devices people have put together on bicycle frames, or using bicycle wheels.

Doesn’t appear to be any limit to it.  However obscure and esoteric the interest, there’s somone, somewhere on the Internet thinking along the same lines who’s already done some of the heavy thinking.

The neighbor up the hill tells me people are putting together 3D printers in their garages allowing them to duplicate anything that’s ever been manufactured.  Putting what they do up on the Internet so other people can manufacture the same thing somehow.  Some guy making a crescent wrench that works from his old crescent wrench and a printer.

It’s no wonder the governments of the world are suspicious and concerned.  With things like that going on there’s no predicting what will come of it.  People might get used to thinking and begin to make a habit of it.

About a century ago two bicycle mechanics put something together the scientific community was busy agreeing couldn’t be done.  Without any help they took a manned heavier-than-air flight convincing enough to turn everything upside down.

Didn’t even have computers and the Internet.  If they’d had those someone might have been able to convince them they couldn’t do it.  Or everyone and his dog would have been making one in his garage.

A failure to communicate

ivy leaguers

These unfortunate undercover police officers were mistaken for ordinary citizens when they attempted to address uniformed police officers in the way uniformed police officers address ordinary citizens.